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A dialogue trope where a character makes a list of items, groups, or individuals and then deviates from the pattern established with the last one, sometimes the penultimate one. Usually Played for Laughs.

In literary criticism, this is called a syllepsis, or semantic zeugma.

Typically used for comedy, the last item is normally a focus of insult or Butt-Monkey status. However, it is possible to just delight in the subversion of the theme listing.

Weird Aside: A strange line which contrasts with the topic of the conversation.

Other examples:

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In one Progressive commercial Flo is the band manager for The Dizzcounts, whose members are Safe Driver, Paperless, Paid in Full, Multi-Car, and Joey Fatone.

Anime & Manga

Chapter 40 of Kaguya-sama: Love Is War has a list of stereotypical things that can happen during summer vacation. All of them are standard and within the realms of reality... except the last one, which is "time travel or being summoned to another world".

At the start of Volume 17 of Accel World, the leadership of Nega Nebulus gives Haruyuki the following instructions for their meeting with the other Legions.

One panel has several superheroes reacting to a warning of doom for them and anyone they've touched — the rest worry about their female significant others; Batman worries about Robin. Of course, what makes it funny is the insinuation that the last one isn't really all that different...

Batman and Robin #10 (Jun 2012) has a subplot where a villain assembles a bunch of Mooks who have been permanently given HideouslyAmusing Injuries in their encounters with Batman: a guy with a footprint across his face from a kick, another guy who has permanent ligature marks from being strung up in the air a long time, a girl who got a Batarang stuck in her ear (and enhanced it with other piercings), the guy who tried to throw a Batarang back at Batman and got it stuck in his head... oh, and the three guys who were knocked into a vat of toxic waste and fused into some kind of gawdawfulmonstrosity. Wait, what?

Laff-A-Lympics: Yogi's reasons for Monty Cristo not to arrest Hokey: "He's my friend! He's my buddy. And besides, I need him to skate in the last event!"

Ugh, what a non-so-fabulous day. Im late for track and field club, I still taste musty lemons on the roof of my mouth, its raining, I got expelled from school and arrested for public drunkenness and I got soy sauce on my school shirt!

[N]ow I had identifications for all five: Emmett the bear, Jasper the lion, Rosalie the Aphrodite, Alice the pixie, and Edward, the one who expected something to happen with or to or near me that wasn't[.]

The Immortal Game: When Twilight is performing a Sherlock-esque ass-kicking on Esteem and his troops, she lists the special abilities of herself and her friends as she uses the bond granted by the Elements of Harmony to copy them: Unicorn power, mastery of pegasus martial arts, unnatural strength, instant translocation, skill with blade, whatever it is Pinkie Pie does...

After fifteen minutes of his endless, self-centered prattling, Feferi finally shuts him up by launching into her longest speech at him since he arrived. She talks ceaselessly about reforms, the election, and the likelihood of rain tomorrow.

Red Fire, Red Planet: One of the protagonists asks the station computer to give the top five results from a list of 447 possible explanations it came up with for a tachyon burst.

Do not threaten subject. Do not antagonize subject. Do not refer to subject as "fairy", "Tinkerbell", or "Elsa".

In Disorienuptials, Leliana uses the penultimate variant when slipping some very important news into the school's morning announcements. It's played for laughs when one of the students pretends to then be very excited about the last announcement - that there will be pudding at dinner.

In New Hope University: Major In Murder, the "Fall Break" chapter shows twelve fairytale-like stories that allude to the twelve remaining characters' backstories and possible futures, and are generally at least a few paragraphs long. For example, one story about a princess who ripped out her own tongue is implied to be about Lucina. Eleven of the stories are about princes and princesses, but the last one simply says:

In American Graffiti, Curt, who is underage, attempts to purchase a pint of whiskey at a corner store by casually mentioning it in the middle of a list of other items that he asks the owner to get for him. It doesn't work; after the other items are bagged up, Curt is asked for proof of age.

Oliver Warbucks does in the 1982 film version of Annie when he tells Annie that he's going to start looking for her parents:

Warbucks: Grace!note Grace Farrell, his secretary who brought Annie to his mansion. Get me J. Edgar on the phone! Drake!note His butler. Get me the Chief of Police! Asp!note One of his two bodyguards. Get me Walter Winchell! Punjab!note His other bodyguard. Get me William Randolph Hearst! And Saunders, get me a drink!

Being the adventures of a young man whose principal interests are rape, ultra-violence, and Beethoven.

Four Christmases has an example near the end of the movie. After three dysfunctional divorced parents and their siblings, they finally reach Kate's father, who revealed that he and his wife divorced because he was so committed to his job that he couldn't make the time. Also, unlike the other three parents; he is actually very remorseful of the decisions he made and regrets them daily. Surprisingly somber for a comedy movie.

The Gay Divorcee: When Guy finally catches up with Mimi in the park, he pulls out a picnic basket and props it on the running board of her car.

Guy: Can I offer you anything? Frosted chocolate? Cointreau? Benedictine? Marriage? Mimi:What was that last one?Guy: Benedictine? Mimi: No, the one after that. Guy: Oh, marriage?

Played with brilliant subtlety in Ghostbusters when Peter Venkman introduces his team at the library:

Quill: I come from Earth, a planet of outlaws: Billy the Kid, Bonnie and Clyde, John Stamos... Drax: Sounds like a place which I would like to visit.

In The Naked Gun, Frank, trying to break Jane's sensory-induced hypnosis, says "Jane, since I've met you, I've noticed things that I never knew were there before... birds singing, dew glistening on a newly formed leaf... stoplights."

Police Academy 2: Their First Assignment: The owner of a lamp shop closes up for the night by shutting the security gates, padlocking the doors, setting a bear trap, and placing a life-sized cardboard cut-out of Dirty Harry at the door.

We once laughed at the horseless carriage, the aeroplane, the telephone, the electric light, VITAMINS, radio, and even television!

For clarification, vitamins are technically not an invention, since they can and do occur naturally.

Predators is a movie about incredibly dangerous people being brought into an extra-terrestrial game preserve on another world. This vicious band of misfits is comprised of a former black ops mercenary, an IDF sniper, a drug cartel enforcer, Spetsnaz commando, a convicted murderer/rapist, a death squad leader, a Yakuza mafioso... and a nerdy, bespectacled doctor. Guess who's the most cold-blooded killer of them all.

Moe: There goes Shemp with a left jab! There goes Shemp with a right uppercut! There goes Shemp with a haymaker! [Offscreen Crash] There goes Shemp...

In Zoolander, while brainwashing Derek into assassinating the prime minister of Malaysia, Mugatu warns him not to be distracted by "beautiful celebrities". The training room then offers cardboard cutouts of such examples like Lance Bass, Fred Durst, Lil Kim, and...Garry Shandling.

Literature

One of the sections of Gullivers Travels is titled "A Voyage to Laputa, Balnibarbi, Luggnagg, Glubbdubdrib, and Japan." Admittedly, at that time Japan was almost completely closed off to foreigners and thus almost as fantastic as said other countries.

The Doctor Who Expanded Universe short story "Walkin' City Blues" by Joffy Brown has the Doctor describing a Femme Fatale's "glamour implants" to his companion "A subtle combination of exotic pheromones, AI wetware wit-routines, genetically-enlarged pupils, and a spray-on tan."

Skip: Why, just today, I've heard the word dragon spelled 'dragoon,' 'daragon,' 'dragen,' 'deragin,' and 'blarsnaf.' Sorceress:Er... 'blarsnaf?Skip: That was from Pug the cook. He speaks Lukarvian, but the word should actually be spelled 'blarsnef' in his language.

Also, Skip's three magical powers: hearing spelling, hearing punctuation, and smelling so delicious to dragons that they go crazy with the desire to eat him.

Dave Barry Slept Here states that, at the time of the Suez Crisis, major international crises were also happening in "Hungary, Poland, Lebanon, and the quiz-show industry."

To save time, I shall place all of us in the same row at the Metro cinema; Robert Taylor is mirrored in our eyes as we sit in flickering trances — and also in symbolic sequence: Saleem Sinai is sitting-next-to-and-in-love-with Evie Burns who is sitting-next-to-and-in-love-with Sonny Ibrahim who is sitting-next-to-and-in-love-with the Brass Monkey who is sitting next to the aisle and feeling starving hungry.

There were 12 sommeliers from around the country in the contest; they got there by winning regional competitions, and earlier in the day they had taken a written exam with questions like: "Which of the following appellations belong to the Savoie region? (a) Crepy; (b) Seyssel; (c) Arbois; (d) Etoile; (e) Ripple." (I'm just kidding about the Ripple, of course. The Savoie region would not use Ripple as an insecticide.)

Flambeau ... received him in a rococo artistic den behind his office, of which the ornaments were sabres, harquebuses, Eastern curiosities, flasks of Italian wine, savage cooking-pots, a plumy Persian cat, and a small dusty-looking Roman Catholic priest, who looked particularly out of place.

Dick: You are missing the real earth, like the happiness in a child's eye, when a loving parent tucks him in at night. Sally: Or the wonder of two young lovers as they stroll down the beach, dreaming of what is yet to be. Tommy: Or the quiet contentment of a couple in their autumn years as they sit and reflect on a life well spent together. Harry: Or hookers. [beat] Cheap painted hookers.

Also, when Sheldon temporarily becomes a Crazy Cat Lady, he names all of his cats after physicists who worked on the Manhattan Project - except for the last cat, "Zazzles", who is "just so zazzy".

From Covert Affairs: After losing a lot of money at craps, intentionally And, ironically enough, almost failing to do so as she suddenly won 30.000 dollars betting on snake eyes; Auggie's astonished expression is gold, Annie is talking to the woman they're hoping will try to turn her:

Annie: My sister's husband lost his job a couple of months ago, so they... they burnt through all their savings, I don't have anything, I don't have anyone to go to... [increasingly emotionally] I'm totally screwed, God! And if I can't leave the country, I'll probably lose my job, — I mean I have to tell them why I can't come back, and my TOOTH hurts!

In October 7, 2008, while analyzing the "stupid" vote, John Oliver broke it down into twelve sections: paste eaters, numbskulls, nitwits, fucktards, people whose hands get stuck in pickle jars when they eat pickles, people who lose arguments to babies, douchenozzles, tiger petters, people who jump up and down on frozen lakes, shaved gorillas who've somehow managed to acquire a driver's license, the voluntarily lobotomized, and Cubs fans.

In their commentaries on the television news media, they'll often show the news media's hive-mind collective latches onto a particular key-word or -phrase and repeats it incessantly by means of a montage. They'll show sometimes upward of a dozen clips of different news anchors, reporters, and pundits repeating the same catch-phrase about an item, then end it with one of the talking heads saying something ... really bizarre, though still on-topic.

Max:(singing) Penny, Penny, Penny, you're my closest friend. Penny: Oh, you wrote a song about me! Max:(singing) Want to be with you 'til the bitter end. Penny: That is so sweet. Max:(singing) Got the biggest calves I've seen on a man.

Last Week Tonight with John Oliver: In his NRA TV segment, Oliver noted that the app had yet to be dropped on devices from "big tech companies" like Apple, Amazon, and Roku. Oliver then impersonates a Roku employee, cheering, Get in here! Someone just called us a big tech company!' For comparison, in 2018 Apple and Amazon had their market caps reach $1 trillion, while Roku was a relatively pedestrian $5 billion.

Monty Python's Flying Circus: They loved this trope. Many sketches feature odd lines or characters that come across as being totally out of place.

For instance, in the sketch where German and Greek philosophers play a game of soccer the German team also has Franz Beckenbauer playing along, who wasn't a philosopher but a famous soccer player. The commentator notes: "A bit of a surprise there".

Used from time to time on Our Miss Brooks. This example comes from "Hawkins Travel Agency"; Miss Brooks is trying to sell Mr. Stone on a trip to France:

Miss Brooks(speaking with a French accent): Oh, there is nothing like Paree in the summer. The Arc De Triomphe, the Louvre Palais, the Place de Concorde... and Piccadilly Circus. Mr. Stone: Miss Brooks, Piccadilly Circus happens to be in London. Miss Brooks(speaking with a Cockney accent): Right-o governor, but if you were so nearby, you wouldn't want to miss that now, would you?

On QI, Alan is always treated as the Butt-Monkey of the group and there are several running gags to this effect. For instance each episode has a theme for the buzzers and then Alan will always reveal his one last as something comically different; e.g., the first three together are sections of the Westminster Chimes and his is a cuckoo clock; the first three get a cowbell, a bicycle bell, a tea bell and then Alan gets Leslie Phillips going "Ding Dong!". They also are often introduced with some extraordinary adjective or other theme and then a similar twist for Alan e.g.

Sesame Street is the Trope Namer, more or less. Played straight, as a teaching routine (shown as the page image); viewers were asked, in this game of same and different, to identify the odd item out of a group of (typically) four, such as three boxes having different breeds of cats, and the fourth having a dog. At times, actions were depicted and the object was to pick the box with a different type of action (such as three kids dancing or sports activity, while the fourth kid is engaged in a sedentary activity such as reading). The song that played during all this was "One Of These Things," with the lyrics sometimes varied due to the subject.

Supernatural: In "ScoobyNatural", Sam and Dean end up in an episode of Scooby-Doo. To be precise, they end up in a retelling of the Scooby-Doo, Where Are You! episode "A Night of Fright Is No Delight". But things go even further off the rails when one of the houseguests ends up dead, and the Mystery Inc. gang rattle off their catchphrases... with Dean chiming in at the end.

Voyagers!: While trying to cheer up/distract Jeffrey during "Cleo and the Babe", Bogg lists three examples of Manly Tears occurring during history: Napoleon at Waterloo, George Washington at Valley Forge, and General Eisenhower at Bunker Hill. Jeffrey, as intended, reacts in surprise, knowing that the third is inaccurate.

Similarly, the US version of Whose Line Is It Anyway? introduces each of the four panelists with a related non-sequitur, ending in Ryan Styles, who gets a phrase that is comparatively more mundane, insulting, or damnation by faint praise. For example, one episode introduced Wayne, Jeff, and Colin as famous landmarks, and introduced Ryan as a Cleveland bus stop.

Australia's Today Tonight ran a story in early 2007 about a man who was, quote, "an armed robber, drug trafficker, and shonky builder."

Newspaper Comics

A Piranha Club strip has several solicitors, each for different charities: "Save the Condors", "Save the Polar Bears", "Save the Whales", "Save the Pandas", "Save the Rain Forest", "Save the Elephants", and finally "Save the Leftover Spaghetti Sauce".

Pinball

Bigfoot's cave in White Water houses five items, discovered in this order:

At the 2014 edition of WWE PaybackThe Shield faced Evolution. The Shield's outfits were all black, Triple H and Randy Orton wore black with white designs, even the referee was in black and white, but then Batista came out in a blue outfit. It caused "#bluetista" to trend during the whole match.

(Acclamations. Applause in the boxes. Flowers and handkerchiefs are thrown down. The officers surround Cyrano, congratulating him. Ragueneau dances for joy. Le Bret is happy but anxious. The viscount's friends hold him up and bear him away.)The Crowd(with one long shout): Ah! A Trooper: Tis superb! A woman: A pretty stroke! Raguenau: A marvel! A Marquis: A novelty! Le Bret: O madman!

An audio montage of assassination victims of the 1960s includes snippets, each followed by a gunshot, of the voices of John F. Kennedy ("Ask not what your country can do for you"), Martin Luther King ("I have a dream"), Malcolm X ("By any means necessary"), Robert F. Kennedy ("To follow in the footsteps of my brother"), and Anne Murray ("Spread your tiny wings and fly away").

When the Cold War ends, the Private Eye Monologue pronounces Communism dead except in China, Vietnam, Cuba, North Korea, Angola, Mozambique, North Yemen, and Vermont.

Video Games

In World of Warcraft there's a quest which has players delivering a package containing compressed blasting powder, a tempered mithril bomb casing, and some safety goggles. If you don't understand why this qualifies, then you don't know Goblins. They are fans of Stuff Blowing Up but are not very big on safety.

Of the five pillars of creation, four of them are named after Titansnote The Aegis of Aggramar, Hammer of Khaz'goroth, Tidestone of Golganneth, and Eye of Aman'thul but the fifth is named after Elune, whose nature is unknown.

Borderlands and Borderlands 2 both do this when introducing the characters and their classes. In the first game, we have Mordecai as The Hunter, Lilith as the Siren, Roland as The Soldier and Brick as Himself. The next game does Axton as The Commando, Maya as The Siren, Salvador as The Gunzerker and Zero as A Number.

In the first game's "The Secret Armory of General Knoxx" DLC, the Crimson Lance drone enemies will occasionally quip that their contents can poison small pets, livestock and people named Jason.

The Pre-Sequel! continues this tradition with Wilhelm as The Enforcer, Athena as The Gladiator, Nisha as The Lawbringer and Claptrap as A Mistake.

Jonah Ashland: Look at them down there. Twenty years ago you'd have never seen a shindig like this. Humans and turians together like it's nothing. Council species all concerned about the fate of batarians... Everybody trying to have sexwith the asari... Shepard: That's not new. Jonah Ashland: Just seeing if you were awake.

When questioned why Girly Girl Diana Allers was chosen to host the military-sponsored war program Battlespace she has this to say:

Diana: Girly sells, Commander. It was focus-grouped. Asari identify more with a female host, salarians enjoy higher pitched voices... Samantha: And the turians? Diana: Turians are nuts! A civilization of war nerds: loyal viewers, but they send the creepiest fan-mail.

Moshi Monsters: In "Missing Moshling Egg", there is an "evil to-do list", which reads "steal egg from Bumblechops, make shrinking potion, take over Monstro City, call mum..."

Civilization V had the tendency to sneak a strange or humorous city name at or near the end of the long city list, one that would be seen by few players during a normal game. There were, say, "Mumbles" (a district in Swansea) for England and "Lebam" (a tiny place in Washington state) for America. Mods often continue this trend; for instance, one based on Zootopia includes "Wilde Times" as the last city, which only appeared in an alternate draft of the script.

Real Life Comics extrapolates the generational evolution of electronic technology in popular music here: In order, characters complain about music being used without instruments (synthesizers being introduced), without actual singing (autotune), without actual people (computers procedurally generating music), and finally the ability of music to be played at all (due to oppression by robot overlords). Counts as a Famous, Famous, Fictional, among other things.

Zero Punctuation loves to do these in the animation. In the L.A. Noire review, there is a mention of the main character "hopping around between four different police departments", which is illustrated with four doors marked Traffic, Homicide, Vice and Biscuits.

-There's really only so many basic stories that can exist. The main character is trying to get somewhere (the Odyssey), get something (the legend of the Golden Fleece), win someone's heart (the Iliad), get revenge (Cain and Abel) or save the world (Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure).

The Homestar Runner cartoon "Why Come Only One Girl?" has a montage of scenes towards the end showing what might happen if any of the planned female characters were ever put in a cartoon. Cue Strong Bad...

In 20 Haunting Halloween Facts, Matt says, "Pumpkins also come in blue, green, and white. This is great for kids that might want to carve their favourite childhood character. Like Papa Smurf, or Kermit the Frog, or... Michael Jackson!"

In 20 Valentines Day facts, Matt says, "It's almost February 14th, and that means it's almost Valentine's Day! A day where people show they love each other with diamonds, roses, chocolates, and... other things."

In I'm Probably on a Plane or a Ship Right Now, Matt tells the audience that if he doesn't upload a vlog the day after, then it'll be because he choked on a chicken wing, he got stabbed, the ship he's going on sank, or he got attacked by a rabbit sloth.

In 20 Haunting Halloween Facts, Matt says, "The most common costume for male adults is a vampire. For female adults, it's a witch. For Elton John, it's a pack of fudge. [Beat] What?"

In 20 Jolly Christmas Facts, Matt references Michael Jackson's alleged pedophilia. He says that, according to legend, St. Nicholas would bring gifts for good children, coal for bad children, and Michael Jackson for really bad children.

In 20 Lucky St. Patrick's Day Facts, Matt says that a good classification for a leprechaun would be a troll, a gnome, or Seth Green.

In this weird story Guenevere "asked out Jimmy Wherever and Ilya Muromets and Maid Marian but they all said no and then England was at war with Canada and Russia and England."

"If Quake was done today" (a satirical video by Kai Moosmann) begins with a parade of logos for id Tech 2, Bethesda Game Studios, Face FX, Scaleform, Speedtree, and Aldi Süd, which is not a middleware company but a German supermarket.

A meme that started on Tumblr and migrated to other social media takes the form "Reblog/retweet/share if you are [minority group], support [minority group], or [extremely mundane trait]". The joke is that the last trait makes it a blatant Push Poll.

Western Animation

In the Brandy & Mr. Whiskers episode "Lack of Brains vs. Brawns", Whiskers states that he and Brandy go together like peanut butter and jelly, bacon and eggs, and donkeys and trombones.

Happens to Scrooge McDuck while he's reading the paper in the DuckTales (1987) episode "Robot Robbers":

Gorrila Grodd: [We are not in it for the money] Sinestro has a blood oath against all Green Lanterns, Parasite simply hates Superman, Giganta is totally devoted to me. The Shade: And the other one? Gorrila Grodd: Killer Frost? She just likes to kill things.

This happens again in Galileo, Galileo!, where Sean is listing his heroes: Galileo Galilei, Neil Armstrong, Albert Einstein, Madame Curie, and Patti Smith.note All of Sean's heroes are scientists, except for Patti Smith, who is a punk singer. Even Sunspot seems confused.

In "Sean Has A Cold", when Jet explains why he chose Earth for his Best Buddy kite, he explains that Earth is round, has air and water, trees, and pie.

"Catch and Release": Steven is getting ready for bed, and says goodnight to his stuffed animals: "Good night, happy bear. Good night, sad bunny. Good night, playful kitty. Good night, ominous triangle at the foot of my bed." The "ominous triangle" turns out to be Peridot, who kidnaps Steven and tries to get him to help fix the Galaxy Warp.

"Back to the Moon": Steven names the Rubies based on the placement of their gems: Army (arm), Leggy (leg), Navy (navel), Eyeball (eye), and... Doc (chest).

In an episode of The X's, Glowface sees the family at the laundromat and thinks they're plotting against him, so he thinks all of their things are weapons in disguise.

The hedgehog gene, first discovered in fruit flies, has three homologues found in mammals. They are called "desert hedgehog", "Indian hedgehog", and "Sonic hedgehog", the latter being most extensively researched (enough that a molecular inhibitor for the gene was named "Robotnikinin").

Cornell University plays this trope straight with respect to the Ivy League.

The rest of the Ivies were founded during America's Colonial period. Cornell was founded in 1865, mere weeks after the end of the Civil War.

While Cornell is a private institution like all other Ivies, it's the only member that receives direct funding from a state government (i.e., apart from grants for specific research projects). Cornell contracts with New York State to serve as that state's land-grant (agricultural) university and the state provides money to three of its colleges that perform land-grant functions.

Cornell is the only Ivy member that was coeducational from its founding.

It's also the only Ivy member whose official motto is written in English. The official mottos of all other Ivy members except Yale are written in Latin; Yale's is in both Hebrew and Latin.

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